The global pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation as organizations respond to the demands of a hybrid workforce and the need for IT modernization. Organizations have been focusing on enabling their workforce to remain productive while remote which has introduced risks into their environments which can lead to devastating and costly cyber-attacks. By investing in digital transformation with strong security and IT modernization, such attacks can be prevented.

Enterprises are investing in digital transformation at breakneck speed and are estimated to spend $6.8 trillion between 2020 and 2023.  In a recent Fieldwork by Citrix article, Kurt Roemer, Chief Security Strategist at Citrix, discussed the leading practices to develop a winning digital transformation strategy. He explored the need for balancing risks with opportunities as organizations go through their digital transformation. In this blog post, we dive deeper into how organizations are looking to secure their sensitive corporate resources and modernize their IT systems.

Security’s Role in Digital Transformation

Organizations are going through digital transformation whether they are updating their processes, applications, culture, or technology. However, they must remain vigilant when implementing these changes and protecting themselves from threats. With ransomware attacks increasing over 150 percent in 2020, security teams are overwhelmed. The need for simplified and consolidated zero trust security solutions has drastically increased. Zero trust frameworks are based on the concept of “don’t trust, always verify.” Organizations have looked to zero trust network access (ZTNA) solutions to combat the increase in security threats. A ZTNA solution provides adaptive and identity-aware access to applications instead of access based on network ownership and implicit trust, along with an outbound-only connection to internal applications, protecting them from direct exposure to the internet and per app segmentation where users are granted application access on a one-to-one basis.

Citrix Secure Workspace Access, a simplified and consolidated ZTNA solution, provides secure remote access to corporate resources without a VPN. It provides access to apps based on adaptive access policies, which changes the level of trust based off various factors. For example, only allowing your engineering and product teams to access Jira and sales teams to access Salesforce while in the U.S. territory. Citrix Secure Workspace Access includes multi-factor authentication, adding an additional layer of security to verify the user. Security teams can apply enhanced security policies that mitigate data exfiltration such as restricting clipboard access, enabling digital watermarking, and protection from key logging and screen capturing malware. In addition to those features, Secure Workspace Access includes Secure Browser Service, a cloud-native remote browser that enables users to navigate the web safely without introducing potential threats to corporate network.

As work environments expand, so does the attack surface. Recent studies have indicated that malicious users are commonly external actors posing as insiders to attack company resources from within. Security teams are unable to properly manage the vast amounts of security alerts that flow through an organization’s network. This is where automated, machine learning, and analytics-based security can help.

Citrix Analytics for Security can take automated actions against users based on a calculated risk score. The risk score is based off indicators such as access from an unusual location, excessive authentication failures, and more. Based on this risk score, Citrix Analytics takes action such as logging off the user, requesting user response to identify the activity, add to watchlist, and more.

These security solutions combine to provide a holistic and simplified zero trust solution that is automated, consolidated, and analytics-based.

How IT Modernization and Security Go Hand in Hand

IT modernization has accelerated during the pandemic as organizations rushed to enable remote work through new software, processes, and culture shift. Cloud adoption has been a primary way for organizations to modernize IT. Vendors are able to provide benefits through their cloud services such as:

  • Reducing IT overhead
  • Scaling IT usage up and down as needed
  • Automating updates to software

In the case of traditional VPNs, organizations went through time-consuming and resource-heavy solutions to add emergency capacity such as a forklift hardware upgrade or a drawn-out licensing procurement process. Beyond the need to continuously authenticate and verify the user, on-premises and cloud applications must be accessed. For on-premises applications,

  • Remote users are trusted and given complete access to all network resources.
  • Poor end user experience that comes from backhauling all the internet bound traffic to the datacenter introducing latency.
  • Privacy issues where IT has visibility into all applications and content accessed by the end user whether it’s corporate or personal.

Citrix Secure Workspace Access enables organizations to overcome this challenge by providing VPN-less secure remote access to internal web applications and users by only exposing the application layer instead of the network layer. It is a scalable cloud service that is available across all GEOs where only corporate and non-personal data flow through the data center protecting end user privacy.

Citrix customers and partners such as Envision IT are already utilizing our products to secure their environments. And they are seeing results.

“Envision helped many organizations leverage technology to successfully navigate many of the challenges presented by the pandemic,” says Bill Crahen, CTO of Envision IT. “Citrix platforms like Citrix Secure Internet Access and Citrix Workspace enable us to deliver a secure and optimal user experience while employees stay safer at home. With that, our clients experienced the benefits of flexible work styles and now have the confidence to continue working that way indefinitely,”

Learn More

Learn about the benefits of Secure Workspace Access and how it provides secure and contextual access anywhere on any device in this solution brief.

Citrix Secure Internet Access is a cloud-based security service that includes a Secure Web Gateway, CASB, DLP, and Malware Protection. Check out the Citrix Secure Access page to learn more on securing your digital transformation and modernizing your IT infrastructure.

Learn more about SASE and Citrix’s solution, if you’re looking for a cloud-based SASE solution to replace your Secure Web Gateway and Web App Firewall appliances.